Ex-Coach Schnellenberger: We Work to Make Players Better Men

Former National Football League coach Howard Schnellenberger says football coaches often take on the role of parents and more with their players in the hope of creating better men in the end.

"We as coaches take on the role of these kids' parents and their pastor and their minister and the whole ball of wax," Schnellenberger told J.D. Hayworth and Miranda Khan on "America's Forum" on Newsmax TVon Tuesday.

"Our job is to bring along these kids to be the best students they can be, the best football players they can be, and to grow up and be the best husbands and wives that we can be, and we work on that on a daily basis," he explained.

"We don't make a course out of it, but . . . we learn by osmosis, is my way of thinking, and when an area of high concentration of manhood and righteousness is there, it'll flow down to the area of low concentration," he said.

"Obviously a man doesn't hit a woman, you don't hurt, you don't overpower anybody, and it's traumatic and whatever the penalty has to be has to be," Schnellenberger said.

Schnellenberger, also the former head coach for Florida Atlantic University, says that "in my 55 years of coaching I've never had anything like this come up."

He said the most difficult situation he once faced was with a player who had gotten in a bar fight, when someone had hit on his girlfriend.

"I went down to the courthouse when the arraignment came out," he explained.

"I talked to the judge and I said, 'Mr. Judge, this boy has not been in any problem before, I'd like for you to think about turning him over to me,'" he said. "And he says, 'that's a good idea, coach,' and I said, 'rest assured — the punishment he gets from me will be worse than you all can afford.'"

"The boy turned out to marry the girl, and they have a family and everything is fine," he added.